Tuesday, September 9, 2008

Tis The Season

Everyone is talking about Palin and her issues and skeletons but I'd like to keep it a little more local. This is just an article about my friend Kelly who's running for state senate in NH. Wish I lived in my homestate so I could vote for her myself!

DOVER — Her brand of political activism saw her walk from her home to Concord to support a presidential candidate. Now Kelly Halldorson is looking to join the state Senate.

The Dover native plans to file this week as a Republican for the District 21 seat being vacated by three-term Sen. Iris Estabrook, making it a two-woman race with Democrat Amanda Merrill, a former lawmaker who's been working on policy in the House majority office in Concord. The district covers Dover, Durham, Epping, Lee and Rollinsford.

Halldorson wanted to run as an independent, but she learned that left the door open for a Democrat, without a Republican opponent, to find a spot on the ballot under both major parties.

"I'm not a big Washington Republican by any stretch," the 35-year-old mother of three said Monday. "I'm not real thrilled with Bush. I'm anti-war" and she doesn't like it when ex-presidential candidates bash the libertarian Republican movement.

Halldorson gained widespread notoriety after she walked 38 miles from her Silver Street home to Concord to protest the media's treatment of Rep. Ron Paul, the Texas Republican who built an unexpected nationwide following.

But she says the experience didn't inspire her to get more involved.

In fact, she "can't stand politics" — just like she can't stand overregulation or lawmakers not returning a message.

"I really want to get people who want to have that much control over our lives out" of office, she said. "I certainly don't think that's the New Hampshire way. I'm about living free."

Halldorson, who home schools her children, said the Legislature's treatment this year of a home-school bill sponsored by Estabrook caught her attention — first because of attempts to further regulate the industry, second because of the lack of response from legislators. The bill ended "watered down," with a commission set up to examine the state's home-school laws, she said.

"I plan on being one of the most accessible legislators this district has seen," she said. "I will post my cell phone number on my website and promise to respond to every single email I receive from my constituents."

Halldorson said she's not anti-public education, but pro-educational choice. She said she's for local control of schools — not laws like No Child Left Behind that allow schools to be regulated from afar.

Halldorson said her family's struggle to pay heating and medical bills reinforced the need for lawmakers to lower spending. She's also "terrified" at the notion of a sales or income tax.

Halldorson comes to the race with a story rooted in the community. She was raised in a public housing complex primarily by her mother, Ann Grenier, who worked at Portsmouth Naval Shipyard. She entered Dover High School an honors student, but dropped out her junior year feeling "failed" by the system. She returned and graduated the next year, in 1992, before spending the next few years traveling the country. When she got back to New Hampshire, she lived in Somersworth for eight years before returning to Dover in 2004.

A freelance web designer, Halldorson never went to college despite an art scholarship. Throughout the years, she's taken courses in metaphysics, world religions and psychology.

She and her husband, Jeff, a Durham native and self-employed contractor, have three children, Wolf, 13, Griffin, 11, and Zoe, 10.